Exhibitions, Talks and Events

Wild Flowers: A Group Exhibition in London Featuring Russian Artists, 20 July – 16 September

Narrative Projects gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition Wild Flowers (wildness is contextual!) curated by Carlos Noronha Feio. The exhibition brings together eighteen international artists from different generations who work in a number of different mediums. Each work chosen by Noronha Feio for the show examines the motif of the flower. This exhibition has its origins in Noronha Feio’s interest in flora as a representation of power. On the surface of the show, the naïve and sentimental aesthetic value of the flower presents itself as a deceptive cover over the deeper conceptual research that the works truly look into. For example, Richard Hamilton’s Flower Piece B, 1975, shows a major pictorial genre and its flowery allure is an irrelevant anachronism in the context of cultural ideas in our time. Marte Eknæs’ video Rainbow Rose, 2012, shows an alternative use for the 3D modelling software that is primarily used to design military technologies. Mustafa Hulusi’s painting from the Afyon series reference Byzantine mosaic with its lavish use of gold and black contrast, but at the same time hints to intoxication as a current social condition in Turkey and the region of the Near East. Neil Haas’ blind sculpture painted with flowers in a wider context of the artist’s work offers a counterbalance to his studies of young male streetwise masculinity. Wild Flowers (wildness is contextual!) A group exhibition with flowers as its core 20th July – 16th September 2017 Private view 20th July, 6-9pm The artist-curator is seeking to explore how the artists approach the natural beauty of flowers and how the aesthetic quality of the flower motif transforms within the contextual framework of each individual practice. This relationship between formal aesthetics and context creates a duality of possible conceptual readings of the works in the exhibition. Each flower becomes a representation of the artists’ interests, research and experiment. Collectively they touch on subjects as varied as beauty, sexuality and technical ability through to issues of consumerism, politics, war and pop culture. Using flower as case in study Noronha Feio investigates context dependency of an image in situation when information becomes increasingly more and more image heavy.

Participating Artists:

Mahmoud Bakhshi(b. 1977, lives and works Tehran); Juliette Blightman (b. 1980 lives and works in Berlin); Lynn Chadwick (born, lived and worked 1914 – 2003 in England); Ilya Dolgov (b. 1984 lives and works in Kronshtadt, Russia); Harm van den Dorpel(b. 1981 lives and works in Berlin); Marte Eknæs(b. 1978 lives and works in Norway); Marita Fraser (b. 1969 lives and works in London); Neil Haas (b. 1971 lives and works London); Richard Hamilton (born, lived and worked 1922 – 2011 in London); Mustafa Hulusi (b. 1971 lives and works in London); Xiao-yang Li (b. 1985 lives and works in London); Georgy Litichevsky (b. 1956 lives and works in Moscow and Berlin); Gabriela Machado(b. 1960 lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Lulou Margarine(b. 1984 lives and works in New York, USA); Carlos Noronha Feio(b. 1981 lives and works in London and Lisbon); Alice Ronchi(b. 1989 lives and works in Amsterdam); Daniel van Straalen (b. 1987 lives and works in The Hague, Netherlands); Sigrid Viir(b. 1979, lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia). Exhibition is curated by Carlos Noronha Feio.

Narrative Projects is a contemporary art gallery presenting an international, cross-disciplinary programme with a particular focus on conceptual work. Founded in 2013 by Daria Kirsanova, narrative projects first operated as a project space organising exhibitions in London as well as off-site collaborations around the world. Since opening its permanent Fitzrovia space in 2015, the gallery shows and represents an important array of international, established and emerging artists, and has further assisted in the organisation of international projects.